


Corrupted

by ballvvasher



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Blasphemy, Canonical Character Death, Christian Character, Christianity, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Painful Sex, Past Underage, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Puritan!Hux, Puritanism, Racist Ideologies, Racist Language, Religion, Reverend!Hux, Romance, Sexual Tension, Soulmates, executions, repressed sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:21:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8476921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballvvasher/pseuds/ballvvasher
Summary: The ruthless, bigoted Reverend Hux has but one goal—to rid his community of those who philander with anti-Christian creeds, in a time where the commonwealth has begun to slowly decline from its authoritarian past. His faith and lust for power over his flock are tested when notorious vagabond Kylo Ren forces him to question who he’s painted himself to be. Story takes place in early 18th century Massachusetts (post Salem witch hunts). Content warning for mentions of rape, racist ideologies and language, and homophobia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Kylo Ren is not a “white Indian” but is a nomad/outsider who has appropriated Algonquian traditions throughout his lifetime. If anyone takes issue please remember this is a work of fiction. The racism warning refers to slurs and the historical genocide against Native Americans in this time period. (The slurs, while offensive, are as mild as the slurs used in Disney’s Pocahontas.) The rape mention warning refers to the rape of a Native American girl in Ren’s past. Hux’s sermons are largley inspired by the works of Johnathan Edwards and other theologians (and I didn’t bother dropping citations because this is a gay fanfic hahah but if you’d like to cleanse your soul after reading this fic, check out some of these documents at http://www.apuritansmind.com/) 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Hope you guys enjoy :)

Bleak December winds flagellate the town into complacency, ushering parishioners with its firm hand. While few townsmen live in want of basic sustenance, Reverend Hux relishes the winter season when luxury is scarce and faith in the Lord’s alimony is tested amongst his flock.

His frown never falters, stiffening his youthful features like a mask. Reverend Hux constricts his hand around his leather notebook, his most prized possession outlining his ideologies obsessively with both selected scripture and his own methods for the church’s future. He marches toward the county jailhouse.

Kylo Ren—drifter, criminal, practitioner of sorcery and other deviltries, has finally been taken captive. Hux’s job, as it has been for years, is to deem the prisoner's soul worthy of mercy. Mercy is the Lord’s venture. His is to follow the law. Ren’s been a thorn in his side for ages, and he’ll ensure the man’s execution will be brutal and public. If he’s deserving, of course.

Sickening smile contorting his lips, Reverend Hux slithers through the hall leading to the worn iron cage that harbors the vagrant nuisance.

Ren slouches against the wall, torn cloak crumpled under his chin. Black hair cascades over his profile, shielding his eyes. He’s asleep.

Hux clears his throat, glowering from between the bars. Bruising his notebook with his woolen gloves.

Dark eyes peek through the strands of black. “Nobody’s dying here today, Reverend,” Ren groans, supercilious, as if Hux is here to read him his last rites.

Naturally Ren had to be the first to speak. Hux’s mistake was allowing it so. “Arrogance is hardly behooving for a man such as yourself. An outsider and an enemy of our commonwealth.”

“Some community. The governor mocks your campaign, your crusade against ‘sorcery’. Your game is exhausted.”

Hux grimaces, determined to not allow Ren to phase him. “If any man shall worship any other god but the Lord, he shall be put to death. The law is not a game.”

Ren has the audacity to smirk, leering through the confines of the bars. He turns away, ignoring. Indifferent.

Seething, Hux affronts the bars of the cell to get in Ren’s face. “God will exercise no pity towards you. He will cast upon you, not spare. You will see nothing in God, and receive nothing from him but hatred and the fierceness of his wrath. Nothing but the mighty falls and outpourings of—”

“Your parishioners might adore the sound of your voice. However I would prefer a nap.”

Anger reddening his cheeks, Hux flips open his notebook, grating out his sermon like a diatribe of threats. “Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, will have no pity on you. Though he had so much love to sinners, and offers you the benefits of his blood, he will have no pity upon you. You never will hear any more instructions from him. He will be your judge, to pronounce sentence against you.”

“Is that a handwritten Bible?” Ren asks condescendingly. “That’s not even—that’s a diary. Did you _rewrite_ the Bible? In your diary?” he laughs, eyes glinting. Dangerously amused.

“A clergyman’s notes are permitted whereas the creation and distribution of paganist texts are forbidden,” Hux defends, resolve withering exponentially before the prisoner.

Shrugging, Ren turns towards the reverend. “I wasn’t implying anything. I just thought it was,” he puckers his chin as if scenting the air for a fitting insult, “endearing. That you brought your little notebook for a show-and-tell.”

A twitch worries Hux’s curling lip. “So you admit to having anti-Christian texts?” Hard proof would surely warrant the swiftest of executions.

“Now Reverend, that would akin me with the witches and thieves that allegedly haunt your ‘commonwealth.’ I’m merely a man trying to make ends meet. This winter will surely be the villain to those less fortunate than yourself.”

“Execution will be too easy, too simple of a punishment for the likes of you, Ren,” he sneers, tenacity shattering.

This only makes Ren snort and get to his feet. His cloak tumbles down his shoulders and Hux gets an eyeful of Ren’s imposing form—the mammoth span of his chest, his muscled forearms like coiled rope, the cut of his jaw elongating his face and compounding to his impossible height. “In case you have yet to notice, I’m untouchable.” Ren rakes his gaze down Hux’s lankier form, across his stark black woolen coat and pants, to the heeled shoes binding his curling toes.

“We’ll see about that,” Hux vows, all but spitting in Ren’s face.

“Today you’ve don’t little else but confirm my suspicions about you,” Ren cocks his head, gate boasting around his cell as if he’s the interrogator.

This ought to be entertaining. “And what were those?” he deadpans.

“You use your commonwealth’s faith in God to control them and it has worked little in your favor. And you’re either obsessed with me because you think I have some mystical power to control others and you want a slice of it—or you want to use me as an example to unite your settlement, hang me in front of the schoolhouse. Like in the good old days.”

Arrogant bastard, presuming his own importance, indifferent to the logic and truth of the matter. Unable to counter Ren’s retorts any longer he begs to inhale a fresh breath of air, far from the stench of the cell. “I’ve had my fill of your antics.”

Ren smirks. _I have you all figured out._

Reverend Hux stalks off without another word.

 

\--

 

They let him go.

They let Ren go, back to squabble and take shelter in the forest, to commune with devils and barbarians. The governor deemed Hux’s claims as unproven and they let him go, with only a vilification of his reputation as his meager punishment.

It takes Hux almost a week before he can no longer bear the thought of Ren running free. He takes it upon himself to form a search party. The other parishioners aren’t as forthcoming with the need to see Ren brought to justice.

“Reverend Hux, our men have to maintain the wells this time of year. One harmless outlier isn’t a concern,” the herd tells him. “Reverend, the woods are wild with savages and untamable beasts,” is another excuse. They prove themselves to be as weak as their governor.

Boiling with determination, Hux saddles up a borrowed horse and begins his search. Alone. The rashness of his decision doesn’t strike him until much, much later in the day, when he sits on his steed trapped in the wood with no clear direction to follow.

“Damn,” he blasphemes now that he’s in the enclosure of wood, free to spit obscenities without turning the bonneted and combed heads of his parish. A wind kisses his rosy cheeks, drying his lips and narrowing the green of his glare.

Hux hobbles off the horse, guiding it on foot to a nearby stream. Graciously, the horse accepts the drink through the glasslike spill of the half-frozen water. Hux tethers it to a thin birch tree, scoping his sight’s distance around their resting point in hopes to find a clue where Ren resides.

The sky looms white under the threat of falling snow. Typical.

Stupid, stupid idea. He teaches patience that God will deliver a punishment worthy of the wicked, yet here he is attempting to wrangle Ren in the woods like a fur trapper. Sloppy, reprehensible work.

He paces around, eying a tall tower of stone. Made by nature but worth investigating.

Smoke pillars into the sky just beyond it. Finally. Hux marches, determined, horse forgotten by the stream.

Until his footing is compromised, launching him forward in a scuttle on his feet. His ankle pinches against a thin, taut rope, and the sharp stab to his backside rips a violent scream from his throat.

Hux gapes, choking at the gore of the arrow embedded deep into his flesh. He’s triggered a brutish trap, effectively rendering escape impossible as if he were some game-hunted animal. Lurching forward, Hux plants his face flat in the rot of the forest floor.

His vision clouds, sinking him in the barren black of unconsciousness.

 

\--

 

Kylo Ren tosses another log on his fire, sending the embers upwards to the dusky pale sky. Snow has already started to trickle through the canopy, niggling the flames to suffocate.

The reverend weighed almost as little as a young doe. The trap Ren had laid out was made for beasts, not men. The poison dressed arrowhead would have only made Hux faint in the head. It must have been the shock of getting shot in the buttocks that made him pass out like a waifish child.

He looks awfully like a child now, features slack and pale, eyes bulbous under the thin skin of his closed lids and long transparent lashes, lips hanging agape, pink tongue poking through like the flesh of a freshly cooked mussel.

Ren fashions a meal for them to share. It’s only the right thing to do. He doesn’t have many guests, despite how loathsome the reverend will prove to be upon his waking. Slivers of cured deer meat, two lumps of bread, a husk of corn, and rice. If the reverend has something to say about his eating habits he can nibble on pine nuts.

Hux wakes gently, boring his eyes into the fire. There’s an agonizing pain in his side, around his ass like a burn. Did he roll into the fire?

He most certainly had not. It was the incident with the trip wire, now that he’s able enough to recall. Grimacing, Hux attempts to get up.

“Don’t move,” a man orders through a curtain of hair.

It’s Ren, tall and hunched over the other side of the fire. The hunter became the hunted. “Nice trick, with the rope. Figures you’d appropriate the methods of savages,” he curses, trying to stand just to spite him.

Flicking his hair to the side, Ren slides something into a bowl. “I’ve got something to take care of the pain, but you probably wouldn’t like it. The method has been perfected by ‘savages’,” he taunts.

Hux blinks. The pain is bearable so he gives no indication Ren’s hecklings have any effect on him. “Where's my horse?”

“What horse?”

Hux rolls on his side, careful not to jostle his wound. There, beside Ren’s pile of unburned lumber, sits the rope and leather ties that Hux had tethered the horse to. “You let it go?”

Ren ignores him, tending to his bowl.

Damn him, now he has to walk back through the woods for God knows however long.

“It's about an hour’s walk back to town, but I don’t suggest you move,” Ren pipes up, answering Hux’s silent question. The fear that Ren truly has sorcerous abilities to read minds is a fool hearted fear, but logic does little to quell the worry that Ren can see all his thoughts as though they were written on his skin.

His buttock protests under the sweep of winter wind. Hux cranes his head to investigate. Ren slit his pants open high on his hip while he was unconscious, bandage secured snugly around his hip and between his cheeks.

He imagines the painstaking care Ren must have taken to clean and dress the wound. Phantom brushes of Ren’s fingers graze around the pale flesh, tender and secure. He can’t help but shiver at the thought of another man’s hands on him, haunting and damning.

With practiced ease, Hux pushes the blasphemous thoughts away. He’s done this his whole life, stifling the Devil’s taint on his carnal thoughts towards the bodies of men.

“I didn’t see any scars.”

Hux stiffens. “What?”

“You must not go out much. Your hands are like a woman’s, your skin like a baby’s.”

Hux doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“And your hair—it’s fiery. Even more so against your paleness. Some cultures believe red hair to be a mark of Satan,” Ren says, flicking his eyes to Hux to see his reaction. He’s glowering, looking silly on his stomach with his buttock hanging out. “So, congratulations on your first scar,” Ren grins. There was no point to his taunts at Hux’s physical appearance. “You can tell every one of the townspeople how a ‘savage’ shot you and mock his terrible aim—or really good aim.”

Ren clearly dislikes the use of the word ‘savage.’ “Tell me which way to town,” Hux snaps, climbing to his feet. His entire left side objects to the movement but he persists, desperate to escape Ren’s heedless stare.

“Woah, there,” Ren chides, as if settling an upset mule. He nearly drops the bowl of rice in an effort to keep Hux still. “The storm will turn it into a death march. I’ll take you back in the morning.”

“If you knew the storm was coming then why did you let my horse go?” Hux seethes.

“You were out here to find me, weren’t you? Are you happy with what you found?” He’s smiling that easy smirk, dimpling his cheeks flatteringly in the firelight. Hux wants to smack that look off his handsome face.

Indeed Kylo Ren is dangerous, a leech on society, threatening entropy to the fine-tuned order of civilization.

Who just happens to be handsome.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he breathes, finding the need to lie.

Ren passes him the bowl. It’s a slurry of rice, corn, and dried meat. With a side order of bread. “What were you doing out here?”

Hux takes the bowl, stomach rumbling at the sight of the concoction. “None of your business.”

The reverend is by far the most entertaining guest Ren’s ever had.

They dine in silence, save for the cracking of the logs in the fire. Snowfall barrels downward, pummeling their fire into dimness.

“Get up. To the shelter,” Ren advises. “Unless you want your ass to fall off.”

Hux’s face twists at Ren’s crassness and the pain in his buttock, but docilely allows himself to be led into the enclosure of the nearby conical shelter. Temporary, rudimentary shelter. Hardly enough room for a grown man.

“Where will you stay?” Hux asks, dumbly.

Laughing, Ren ushers them both inside the cramped space. It’s dark, except for the slivers of light from the glowing snow-sky through top most part of the roof where the branches come together.

Hux’s breathing elevates. Trapped in a nightmare, inured and locked up with Ren in the dark, no perception of the depth around him.

Until the sparks from a striker ignite a candle between them, and he can see just how close Ren is. Hux takes up more space than he should because of his injury, sprawling on his side like a lounging cat. Ren takes it upon himself to tuck in close by his head instead of his feet. Worrying his lip with his teeth, Hux pretends the proximity doesn’t bother him.

“Comfortable?” Ren breaks the silence.

A gust raps against the animal skins encasing the staffs supporting Ren’s shelter. Hux ignores his inquiry.

“Why the hell did you let my horse go?” Hux hisses. Ren made a conscious decision to leave him here, abandoned, with no hope of returning to town anytime soon. With no one to help him besides Ren. What’s his play?

“I wanted you defenseless so I could hunt you down and harvest your virgin blood,” Ren deadpans.

Hux glowers at his candlelit face, odd proportions bent oblongly in the flickering light. “You’re not very charming.”

“I wasn’t aware I was trying to be,” Ren counters.

Damn him.

“You tell me what you were doing here and I’ll tell you why I let your horse go,” Ren propositions.

Curiosity eats at him. “I was looking for you so I could find proof that you’re a terror to society and bring you to justice.”

“How noble of you.” Ren divulges no indication he’s angry—only amused.

“Your turn,” he grates, buttock protesting.

“I never have and never will mean you or your congregation any harm. I only do what I must to survive. And the only way I would have been able to convince you so—the most arrogant prick I’ve ever met—was to corner you in a snow storm.”

The nerve Ren has, labeling him the arrogant one. “What do you call shooting me with an arrow?”

“You shot yourself with that arrow. It’s merely a deer trap,” he ogles the reverend’s irritated glare. It’s just too easy to tease him. “I even put a little flag on it so no one would be harmed.” Ren’s hopelessly addicted.

“Then what have you to show me? How do you plan on changing my heart?” There’s nothing Ren could possibly do aside from embodying the Second Coming of Christ that could reverse his opinions.

Not that Ren ever could be the Second Coming. Foolish of Hux to toy with the thought.

“I fed you, gave you shelter and warmth, dressed your wounds. And I ask for nothing in return.”

“Any attempt to manipulate me into believing you’re not a parasite is all the proof I need.” He knows Ren has stolen from the commonwealth, consorted with the barbarians and adopted their mysticism, but never had any hard proof. “If you have nothing to hide, why go through the charade?”

“You’re trying to scapegoat me to bring back what fear your late father had united your tribe with. Fear of those who chose not to conform to the whims of your enslaved people.”

Tribe? _Enslaved?_ “We are not enslaved.”

“You’re enslaved to your idealistic notion of absolutes, that God is a hateful god. You’re using the fear of God to orchestrate your agenda, and now that you’ve exhausted that purpose you need to take the next step. Weaponize fear by stringing me up as an example. The outsider, the freethinker.”

“You overestimate your own importance.”

“And I’m the one you went scurrying towards in a last ditch effort to capitalize on terror.”

The wind ripples against the tarps, the skeleton of branches creaking. “What proof do you have that you’re not a sorcerer?”

Ren laughs, sharp and energized like the spark of a flint stone. Leaning in close to Hux’s already diminished personal space. “What kind of question is that? What proof do you have that _you’re_ not the sorcerer? Congregationalist, son of a past-on governor. Perfect front to practice your evil mystic ways. With that hair—I sense the Devil himself inside you.”

Hux gapes, icicle-stiff as Ren brushes his fingertips against his forehead, tucking the mussed strands behind his ear.

“How about I give you something for the pain?” Ren murmurs.

Like a man possessed, Hux trembles in his mortal confines.

Ren’s smile quirks, distinctive and lopsided.

The Devil harbingers Hux’s desire to taste it.

“Lie on your stomach.”

Hux forces his tongue to move. “What are you doing?” he breathes. The candle must be radiating a disproportionate amount of heat for its size.

A small wrap emerges from the folds of the space behind Ren. “Medicine. The indigenous peoples used pain relief remedies far better than the ones I have, but it’s something.”

Ren peels open a bundle of greens, brandishing a pestle and a concave stone. “Yarrow,” he tells him, as if that's all the explanation he needs, grinding the twigs into a gritty pulp. “Lie down.”

Scrutinizing the bed of cloth under his cheek, Hux squeezes his eyes shut, begging his heart to stop its incessant beating.

“Spread your legs a little.”

The reverend takes a little too much hesitance on the order, and Ren raises a brow. Surely the pious reverend wouldn't have such impure, blasphemous thoughts that he'd confuse medical assistance for something more sinful. If only it was light enough that he could confirm the blush blossoming on Hux’s cheeks.

With deft concentration Ren maneuvers the bandage to the side, spreading the sliced open cloth of his trousers and revealing the extent of his body's pallor. “I think I found something whiter than snow,” Ren snickers, unable to resist.

Hux flinches. “Ren,” he pleads, helpless to mutter much else.

“Take it easy. Letting it breathe a little before I put the yarrow on it.”

Throat bobbing, Hux peers from his peripherals. Ren’s fingers brush against the bandage tucked in the seam joining his buttocks. Hux can no longer stand it. “I changed my mind. I don't want any of your barbaric medicines.”

“I'm just clearing the area. You’re wound tight like a loom.”

Pinching the ground yarrow between his fingers, Ren places the plant directly on the freshly stitched wound. Hux hisses, and Ren indulges in watching the tiny muscles in his bare ass flex, the curve of his spine curl from underneath his coat.

“It'll feel better in a few moments. Just breathe.” Ren anchors a palm on the small of Hux’s back and he doesn't flinch away. To his surprise the reverend cants his hips backwards into his touch, slowly relaxing as the medicine takes effect.

Hux drifts off to sleep as Ren pets the downy hairs on the skin between his waistband and his jacket, swept away by the lull of his sorcerous healing agent.

The next morning, Ren wakes him up with tea. Steaming, aromatic like strawberries and sweet grass.

“Thank you,” Hux croaks. He's a reasonable person. Ren had helped him and given him shelter.

“The merriest of Christmases to you, Reverend,” Ren grins, chewing on his bread.

Hux hadn't known what time of the year it was. Many Christians trap themselves in the idolatry of Christmas but he has little need to partake in it. “I don’t celebrate such subversion and debauchery.”

Ren gapes. “Seriously? Christmas?”

“I've never participated and never felt the need to,” Hux explains, thinning under Ren’s scrutiny. Christmas hasn’t been outlawed in years but he did not grow up with it. The simpler civilians advocate for his participation as one of the most influential reverends in town but his ways, as instilled by his late father, are not to be budged.

“It's Christmas,” he beseeches. As if he's genuinely upset about the reverend not celebrating Christmas.

Hux sits up, careful not to agitate his wound. “And how do you suppose I celebrate? Wandering around the woods alone, like you?”

Sorrow sinks Ren’s features. “I had a family. Once.”

Hux heart bites with guilt for the first time in knowing this man. “What happened to them?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Why condemn yourself to a life of isolation? Away from society?”

Ren peels back his layers for the reverend to see. “My father was a trader. I’d traveled between the tribes and villages with him in a small convoy of beasts of burden, moving from place to place, profiting off the needs of people from all walks of life. One day he got caught up in a skirmish. Bludgeoned by a Native with one of his own hatchets.” Ren sips at his tea, skimming the woods for spies—owls that circle in silent stealth, rodents that refuse to die in the withered temperatures. “I abandoned my mother and the rest of my family after that.”

He fails to wait for Ren to continue. “Yet you've adopted the savage way of life, become that which you hate.”

“The Native was told by one of his allies that the drifting trader had been responsible for kidnapping the Native’s sister.”

The offense of vile, revolting, Godless men. Hux curls his lip but surrenders all retort.

“Many nights after my father's death I found the girl half dead, tossed away like garbage. I returned her to her people and she was conscious enough to disclose the identity of her true attacker, one of our settlement’s ‘noble’ warriors.”

Hux knows how Ren’s story ends.

“I confronted him,” Ren continues. “And he laughed at me and said I was a parasite to the good community they’ve built. No different from the ‘savages,’ as he put. So I cleaved his head off with my father's hatchet and delivered it to the Native who killed my father.”

Ren glares, misdirected anger for another time in his life, to the person he once was. Hux can only gape back at him.

“He granted me access to his fisheries and is his hunting grounds. His knowledge of the human soul, the earth and the stars,” Ren concludes.

Ren’s confession warrants an immediate arrest. He has everything he needs now to bring him to justice before the church, his place of residence, a confession of a capital crime. Even a detailed physical description—not quite black hair, nearly two inches of height over him, the scarring on his fingertips from the toils of his rugged lifestyle, the imprint of his distinguished profile and dark eyes glinting a warm hazel in the glow of the morning snow.

Ren’s eyes enflame with fresh anger. “So no, I have no inclination to ever rejoin the people responsible for my torment. I have no inclination to associate with liars and zealots, who pillage everything they can from this good earth and return little else but death and destruction.”

It's entirely possible Ren’s on the run from an outstanding murder warrant, fleeing and changing his name, communing with the savages because of a life debt. “Not all in the commonwealth are Godless,” Hux argues.

“But you are rapists, thieving lands that were never meant for you.”

Hux narrows his eyes. Civilization is inevitable. Order is God's will. It makes no difference whether the savages live or die. And though his heart ebbs with the sorrow of the lives ruined and souls lost in Ren’s past, order is what takes supremacy. The sooner the savages realize that, the sooner blood can cease to shed.

“Come on. I'll lead you back to paradise,” Ren tells him, topping off his tea. Hux inhales his own, the concoction of herbs and spices warm in his core. He would very much like another cup.

But there isn’t time for another indulgence. “Are you sure you can find the way back?” Hux asks, skeptical.

“I spend my days navigating around villages and towns through the wood. Your homestead isn’t far.”

“You know where I live?” The chance of Ren knowing where he sleep should be frightening, yet somehow isn’t.

Ren smirks. And says nothing.

Hiking through the snowy wood is far more formidable than Hux anticipated, his injury screaming against the pad of yarrow.

“This is just sad. Let me help you,” Ren laments at Hux’s faint whimpering, hiccupping like a wounded wolf pup.

With all the reluctance in the world, Hux allows Ren to assist his slight weight. One arm unyielding around his waist, the other gripping Hux’s arm thrown over his shoulders. For the long hour of their journey, Hux permits Ren’s help. Until he sees a familiar brickhouse through the trees.

They absolutely cannot be seen together. “I can make it the rest of the way, thank you,” Hux garbles, shoving him away. The winter air eats into the space which Ren had plastered.

“You should have the bandages changed tomorrow,” Ren advises.

Nodding briskly, Hux limps to his homestead. He begs a look back after several aching paces, but Ren has disappeared between the trees.

 

\--

 

The early March sunlight softens the soil beneath the horse's hooves. Grand views of budding red maples and flowering dogwoods frame Hux’s path, guiding him to his destination. The strap of his pack tugs across his chest, filled with grain, beans, and a few shades of apples. His notebook of sermons sits snug between the collections of goods.

Two months have passed since his encounter with Ren. Two months of juggling his misplaced fascination with the man and Hux finally mustered the courage to head into the wood after him. Again. Toting a bundle of foodstuffs and notes this time, with every intention of attempting to repay Ren with goods and some choice words from the good book.

The urge to turn Ren into the authorities had diminished in his plight, settling to do the Christian will. Ren’s a soul that needs assistance. Structure as deemed by God is the greatest gift he can give another soul.

The lusty thudding of his heart is merely his fear of getting lost again. And the fear that Ren has moved on, flown away in the parting winter wind. Hovering around the next town on the map, miles away, and Hux will never be able to complete his Christian pledge.

Hux exhales. A familiar pillar of smoke breaks the silhouette of blossoming trees. There's a small moment of doubt that tugs him in the opposite direction, back to the safety of the commonwealth. Hux pushes his horse on, scouring the ground for traps from his perch.

Ren’s camp is just how he remembered—simmering bonfire, conical shelter, an ax and logs waiting to be cleaved in two. But now he can see a mat flattened on the ground for God knows what, and Ren has yet to make an appearance. He secures his horse to a tree, vowing to keep an eye on it this time.

A distant splash draws Hux away from the idle campsite, past a curtain of drying clothes pinned to hanging branches. The land gives to the breadth of a stream. Deep enough to settle around the waist of its only inhabitant.

Ren’s startle blooms to congenial surprise. Unable to stop his easy grin, Ren paces closer to the shore. Aware of his nudity, so he maintains submersion at a hip level. He's not a complete scoundrel. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Reverend?”

Hux’s pack feels even heavier under Ren’s heedful stare. Ren’s quite fit for his lifestyle. It's impossible to ignore just how capable he looks. Functional. Athletic. Brawny.

Aesthetically pleasing.

“I wanted to extend my gratitude for your help. From last time. I bring supplies,” Hux calls, tightening his voice into confidence.

“You shouldn't have,” Ren hums. “Here I was expecting your cavalry.” His confession of the life he stole as a vengeful youth clearly hasn’t tempted the reverend to arresting him. Another strange yet congenial surprise.

Hux forces his eyes to Ren's, avoiding his obstructive nudity. “I didn't intend to interrupt.”

“No worries. I'm just about finished.” The daylight frames the gold of Hux’s hair, and Ren could swear there's a blush gracing his cheekbones. Though it's possible to attribute his flush with the wool coat strangling him in the atypical warmth of this spring day.

Ren’s addiction to goad the reverend overcomes him. He wades to shore, the air just biting enough to chill his skin.

Reverend Hux has never seen another man, let alone another person, naked in all his life. The obstruction blinds him and he grimaces to the ground.

“So what'd you bring me?” Ren asks coolly, sorting out his laundry.

Hux unbuttons his top most clasps on his jacket. “Sustenance.”

The reverend proves to be a peculiar little man. “Thank you,” Ren smiles. “How's the ass?”

Stupidly, Hux rubs a hand over the fabric covering the scar puckering his buttock. It healed spectacularly so that it hardly ever bothers him, except on occasion when he climbs down from the too-high pulpit. “Better.”

Thankfully, Ren slips into a pair of trousers. His shirt is still sopping but his worn waistcoat is dry, so he pulls it on over his bare chest. “I'm glad.”

There's no way Ren’s outfit could possibly be completed. But the insufferable man makes no effort to dress further. “I also brought scripture,” Hux pipes up. “If you're as virtuous as you claim to be I was hoping to settle some of your misconceptions.”

“You brought your notebook?” Ren chortles.

Hux hesitates, straightening. “Yes.”

He has to hand it to the reverend. His fervor for imposing his ideologies is admirable. “I think I'd enjoy a slice of your wisdom,” Ren smiles. “Could we sit in the sun? I need to dry off.”

Warmth flowers in his heart. “I'm surprised, Ren.” He's finally interested in being shown the true and righteous path.

Or he plans on teasing him.

“You'll find I'm full of all kinds of surprises,” Ren laughs.

Peace. They’ve reached an agreement. Ren smiles and Hux smiles back, no longer tossing in tireless feud barring God’s intent for Ren to see redemption.

The reverend allows himself to be led to a field of budding grasses, greens vibrant in the heating sun. Another mat awaits them, a centerpiece to the pasture. Ren must come here often.

“So what's for lunch?”

Most of what Hux brought are foods which require preparation, save for the golden and red apples peeking from his pack. Hux offers one with a small flourish.

Ren takes a humongous bite from the apple, a red one with pale white flesh. His hum of approval brings a small smile to Hux’s lips. Satisfying the enigmatic Kylo Ren is a proper reward after all the trials Ren has put him through.

Before now, Ren had never come to town to speak with Hux on his own. Hux always being the inquisitor, the detective, the interrogator at this jail cell. But now, he finally has all of Ren's attention—between the folds of his notebook and in the sweet flesh of his apple.

“How old were you when you abandoned society?” Hux inquires once they're seated on the mat. _How old were you when you murdered the man responsible for your father's death?_ The sun heats his wool, begging his neck to dew with sweat.

Ren frowns. “Not very old. It was long before I first—” He cuts himself off. God forbid he ever taint the ears of the disciplined reverend.

“Before what?” Hux asks, oblivious. Until Ren absurdly attempts to shrug the question off. He snorts. “You're hardly the first or last man to copulate out of wedlock.”

The fact that he's had sex out of wedlock is true, though the reverend might object to Bible study if he knew his first time was as a boy.

With another boy.

“I do hope so,” Ren says lewdly, testing the reverend’s patience.

Hux’s lashes beat, luminous and gold. Ren has the impeccable talent of seeping under his skin. “There's still plenty of time to reacquaint with your faith.”

“I dunno, Reverend. How much time you got?”

“To aid another soul, all the time in the world.” A lie, his first in a while. It’s a startling realization that Ren is the only soul he'd chase after with his sermons in one hand and a noose in the other.

Ren listens on, the reverend’s pedagogy blending in seamlessly with the natural world, beginning with some lyrical sermon about the plight of one of man's worst foes—temptation. There's ample opportunity for Ren to interject, tease the reverend about his rigid beliefs on carnal desire with Ren’s own loose ones.

Attentive he instead listens on silently, goading only the flutter of Hux’s pale green gaze, his minute irritation at the oppressive sun. Marveling at Hux’s stolen looks to Ren followed by the instantaneous reaction of averting his gaze whenever Ren bores into him. Interesting.

“All the good that we have is in and through Christ. He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. All the good of the fallen and redeemed creature is concerned in these four things, and cannot be better distributed than into them.” Hux leafs over another page. “But Christ is each of them to us, and we have none of them any otherwise than in him.”

“Is there any hope for me if Christ never deems me worthy?” Ren asks, adversarial.

“Seeing that the Lord bids all his creations as worthy, yes,” the reverend tells him.

Ren shifts his mass on one shoulder. “What if I seek solace in another person?”

“That would be misplaced faith. Humans are imperfect.” Odd question for a man who lives alone in distrust of society.

“What if two people are so inexplicably connected to one another? And God put them on this earth to save each other.” Ren perforates into the reverend’s narrowed eyes.

Hux blinks, brow puckering. The sun bows around the protrusion of Ren’s collarbones, enhancing the divot between his pecs. The Devil's molten malevolence keeps Hux’s bottom planted on the mat, under the exposing sun so that he can continue to absorb all of Ren’s attention, Hux’s attention focused on Ren like fire on oiled cedar.

The reverend has yet to respond to his question. He’s keener to glower at the mat, as if Ren isn't here. “I apologize if I seem skeptical. I was only trying to participate. Your sermons are so absolute, though I feel like I'm merely getting a glimpse of who you are.”

Hux sits up, pointedly distancing himself. “I have all the patience for your questions, but do know my philosophies ally with what I teach.”

“All of them?”

“Yes,” Hux believes, only hesitating a moment.

Ren reaches into Hux’s pack and takes out another apple. “I confessed to you that I killed a man. Your law demands my execution. Does it not?”

He reddens, trapped in self-deception. “There was goodwill in your heart. Christ will grant you redemption but you must take the first steps.”

The reverend puppets the sermons like carefully crafted speeches. Ren longs for the authentic. “I beheaded him. With a hatchet. It was bloody. Tedious.”

Why must he be so difficult? “What do you want me to say—your soul is damned so don't bother?”

“Tell me something real. And if you can't find it between the pages of your notebook, maybe somewhere else.”

“I don't have to look anywhere else,” Hux scoffs, bruising his notebook. “The Lord bids all his creations as worthy of being saved, but only through penance. I have yet to hear how you regret taking a life. Without penance you're damned.”

Ren’s lip twitches. The reverend flares nicely, bright and alive in contrast to the rigidity of his coat and the grease combed hair. “You look hot. Wearing anything under that coat?”

The reverend spares only a moment to debate accepting Ren’s challenge. Grimacing, Hux undoes the clasps of his coat. His fingers carry a numb tremble but he manages to slip out without looking too foolish. At least he prays so. Naked in his slip of a long sleeved shirt.

Ren eyes the reverend’s impossibly small frame, strangled under his wool coat. Heat pools in his groin at the pale column of throat, the swoop of hair disheveled from Hux’s haste disrobing. “Feel better?” Ren swallows.

“You're the master of diversion.” Hux does feel freer, the world breathing through him.

“I didn't think it were a possible for your holiness to give compliments,” Ren chuckles.

Incorrigible. “That obviously was an insult.”

Ren shrugs.

“And I do give compliments, only where compliments are due,” Hux blurts. Platitudes are uncharacteristic of him but he loathes being on the end of Ren’s arrogant assumptions. “For example. You're quite a capable healer.”

“Mind if I be the judge of that?”

Exposing himself is not what he planned on revisiting after these past several long, Ren-less weeks. His eagerness to play Ren’s games overpowers him, and he sets his book to the side and unclasps his trousers. Twisting his bottom to Ren, the reverend peels back the wool.

Ren stifles a snort in disbelief. Yes, the wound has faded to a small red pucker, as he expected. But he takes a few long, indulgent seconds to ogle the reverend’s pallor. Envisioning a smattering of scrapes and teeth marks around the susceptible flesh. “Hm. Looks good,” he murmurs.

Wordless, Hux tucks himself away. Ren takes a bite of his apple to give his mouth something to do besides salivate for the reverend’s forbidden skin.

 

\--

 

The following Sunday Hux lectures on virtue. He teaches Ren that it is not all beauty is called virtue. Not the beauty of a building, of a flower, or of a rainbow. It is not all beauty of mankind nor the external beauty of the countenance, or shape, gracefulness of motion, or harmony of voice. But it is a beauty that has its original seat in the mind. Virtue is the beauty of the qualities and exercises of the heart, or those actions which proceed from them.

Ren smiles on, appreciating the positive lesson. Because if the feelings in his heart towards the reverend are pure, there’s a chance he just might be virtuous.

Another one of their Sundays is spent discussing the original sin. All mankind, without fail, run into that moral evil of eating the forbidden fruit, the act by which all humans fell from divine grace.

Ren critiques that it’s unfair to assume the depravity of every soul, living or dead, before ever learning what had made them evil. Sometimes control is lost, emotion consumes. Reprehensible acts are committed that cannot be taken back.

Another Sunday Hux talks about redemption again. When God designed the redemption of mankind, his great wisdom appears in that he pitched upon his own, his only-begotten son Jesus Christ, to be the person to perform the work. None could take away the infinite evil of sin but someone infinitely far from and contrary to sin himself. When Christ came into the world and died and performed the work of redemption, the angels understood more of the mystery of man’s redemption.

Redemption through prayer and goodwill unto others, to the people and the memory of people one's hurt in the past. "And to yourself," Hux tells him. "It’s going to be difficult. It’ll be the most difficult thing you'll ever have to do."

Ren doesn’t pray anymore. He can’t remember the last time he felt the need to. And now he’s far too occupied watching Hux pray, eyes sealed and head bowed with natural concentration. Too busy memorizing the softness of his palm in his own rough one as he pretends to pray alongside him for redemption.

Another Sunday they discuss human nature. The reverend recognizes an internal ‘will’ which has the power of interfering with causal relationships and which makes the predictions and control of behavior impossible. One can know what he might do, but it is his feelings that produce actions—good or evil.

“There can be no virtue in a choice which proceeds from no virtuous principle, like from mere self-love or animal appetite,” Hux reads authoritatively. “And therefore a virtuous temper of mind may be before a good act of choice, as a tree may be before the fruit, and the pool before the stream which proceeds from it.”

Ren’s heart is far from virtuous. He gets too emotional, makes rash decisions, fixates on things he cannot have. Sanctified, esteemed, green-eyed things, with bony wrists and wily smirks. But as the reverend preaches, if there’s a chance that his stream is able to feed into a pool worth drinking from, he just might attempt to pray for the first time in twenty years.

 

\--

 

“The reverend is off into the woods again,” the townspeople gossip. “Perhaps he prefers to pray in the silent noise of the forest,” says another. “Communing with God, finding hallowed ground in nature. Very commendable, that reverend.”

Hux totes his bag of apples and potatoes for another round of reading and banter with Ren. He’s taken several trips into the wood to spend his day lecturing Ren of his teachings. Somehow Ren convinces him his sermons are working.

However today there are no horses to borrow. The miserable governor is orchestrating a hunt for the Easter observations this afternoon and all horses are being volunteered to participate. It’s risky enough that the reverend miss seeing them off on their day of heathenism and senseless ritual, but he’s adamant to stick to their schedule. It’s one of the few things in his life he has to look forward to.

On foot the reverend treks through the forest, skipping around the twigs and dry dust of dirt. His nostrils bulge around the fresh scent of lilacs. He’s on the correct path. Ren’s camp is only an hour away by foot and the hum of insects carries him along his well-traveled path to his well visited destination.

Ren’s campsite is gone.

His fire pit is cold and black, haloed by a few scrapings of footprints and spills of grain. Hux’s heart tightens, anxiety stringing him up. The sweat from his hike congeals on his skin like the bite of frost.

He hovers around the abandoned campsite for several long minutes, desperate to see a pillar of smoke through the trees.

Boots crunch in the distance and the reverend holds his breath. “You’re late,” Ren appears behind him, one of his packs slung around his chest.

“There weren’t any horses,” he defends, not quite able to disguise his relief. “What happened to your camp?”

Ren slings a finger to the canopy. “Wasps,” he grunts. Surely enough, a terrifying catacomb is embedded in the tree’s height, swirling with a cloud of pests. “Camp’s this way.”

He’s guided towards town, for almost half an hour. Close enough to town that Hux won’t have to chase down any of his parish’s horses to make it to Ren’s camp at a reasonable hour.

The wasp hive was just an excuse. Ren wanted to be closer to Hux. Maybe it’ll get him to visit more often.

The new location is situated upon a lakeshore, tucked between large pines. Ren’s familiar conical shelter slumps against one of them, not yet put together.

“Need any help with that?” Hux pipes up, setting his pack next to several more of Ren’s supplies.

Ren smirks. “I could use an extra pair of hands.”

With ample instruction, Hux helps Ren reconstruct his shelter. His fingers chafe around the twine ties and threaten to blister.

“Try tightening that side some more,” guides Ren. When Hux still can’t seem to fix it to Ren’s liking, he drifts into his space and takes over, ghosting his rough fingertips on Hux’s leaner ones. “A little elbow grease will do the trick,” Ren mutters, too close to his ear.

Teeth embedded in his tongue, Hux exhales, fighting against the urge to lean towards the soothing noise. The Devil’s work. Prayer must increase if he’s ever to overcome his hellish yearnings.

The shelter erects to completion and Hux steps back to observe his handiwork, clawing his sweat-slick hair from his face. It’s far warmer today than it has been any other day this year, and his exhaustion from his walks in the forest bites into his muscles.

Ren doesn’t appear to be affected. Naturally.

“I’m beat,” Ren lies, gazing to the reverend and the narrow circumference of his waist and twiggy shoulders bound by his shell of wool. He tugs off his own shirt, fumbling with his belt. “I’m dying to test out this lake. Wanna join me?”

Hux’s lips part in alarm. “I can’t.”

“Why not? You’re not supposed to expose yourself before your wedding night? ‘Cause I got news for you,” Ren jibes, “I’ve seen more of you than most others have.” At least he hopes so.

 “Ren,” his lips suppress an amused grin, “I can’t swim.” It’s the truth. Let Ren have his teasing.

But the poking fun never comes. “I’ll teach you.”

Hux’s golden brows climb to his hairline. “Teach me?”

“Yep. I’ll teach you.”

“Why?” he beseeches. Heartbeat spiking, giddy but begging to be quelled.

Ren shucks off his boots and trousers, completely naked. Unabashed, bare before the trees and the lake and the sunlight. He spreads his arms out wide, beckoning. “You coming?”

His heart is a wild drumbeat. The Devil goads Hux’s eyes to fall to Ren’s waistline, the vee of muscle guiding his gaze to the heavy sway of his manhood. When Ren turns around to wade into the lakeshore, the Devil forces Hux’s gaze to his ass—round and muscular and defined.

Trembling fingers pull apart his woolen coat. He’s never been shirtless, let alone nude, in front of another person before. Determined to not disappoint Ren, who’s submerged at his shoulders—probably bent at the knees given his distance from dry land, Hux slips off his undershirt. The warm breeze wracks his skin's sensitive nature, his rosy nipples pimpling in protest.

It’s a swimming lesson. There’s nothing lewd or perverted about a pair of comrades swimming in a lake.

He narrows his eyes to Ren, his form retreating into the lake presumably to give him some privacy. Hux sets his shirts on a log and tackles the clasp of his trousers. Mechanically, he tugs his bottoms down and off of his ankles. Completely bare before Ren. He’s never done anything like this, so wild, deviant, senseless.

Liberating.

His hands cup his genitals, unable to help his modesty. Timid, he turns around towards the lake and Ren is waiting, smirking expectantly. So much for privacy.

Where he expects to hear more of Ren’s playful taunts there is only silent, patient staring, his expression unreadable.

Once the reverend is waist deep in the warm freshwater of the lake, Ren shakes off the spell. “Brave,” he smirks. “Ready for lesson number one?”

“And what would that entail?”

Ren frowns, considering. “We’ll start with dunking.”

“That sounds violent.”

“I’m not gonna dunk you, Reverend. We’re gonna dunk ourselves. Practice holding your breath.”

Bemused, Hux weighs just how he ended up here. Nude in the middle of the woods, chest deep in a lake with an equally as nude Ren. Participating in his instruction.

It could be fun. He scarcely has done anything that resembles fun.

He’d never felt the need for fun. That is, until he met Ren.

“You’re gonna pinch your nose like this,” Ren demonstrates, “take a deep breath, and plunge down like you’re sitting. Ready?”

Hux pinches his nose and nods, eyes squeezing shut. Together they inhale and dive beneath the surface.

There’s no sensation quite like ducking your head under a body of water. He relates the sensation to his days spent with Ren.

There’s nothing quite like the time he spends with Ren. His fascination with Ren and his lifestyle, the way Ren always has something to say. And even when he doesn’t have anything to say, his silence is always the right response. The way Ren demands answers, implores questions of life and happiness and the human soul. How a soul may have a high value to society but can be of limitless, infinite value to another.

And when they’re not together in their field discussing religion and man and God, Hux finds his thoughts revolving around Ren—like what he does with his day, about his family, his father, how he felt when he claimed a life.

How he feels when they’re together. How he feels when they’re apart.

His lungs ache but he forces himself under, smothering himself as if he could smother the foolish, frivolous, depraved desires ripping through him like an arrowhead.

Stern hands tug on his shoulders, anchoring him upwards despite his body’s objection. He breaks the surface, lungs spasming around a fit of coughs.

“Easy there,” Ren chides, worry spiking. Perhaps releasing the reverend to the elements wasn’t such a good idea. “Just breathe.”

Ren holds Hux up by his shoulders, eying him with concern. “Are you alright?”

No, no he’s very far from alright. Hux finds his breath. “Do you ever—think about me?” Hux blurts, fraught. Those broad hands cradle his bare shoulders, grounding and warm.

Ren was not expecting that. His lashes beat, gummy with lake water. “Yes.”

Mouth twisting, Hux eyes slip shut. The water shifts and he shivers against rough fingertips skating up his neck, the pad of a thumb on his hummingbird flutter pulse point.

Ren is powerless to stop his hands from cupping Hux’s jaw, leaning in to Hux’s space. “I think of you constantly.”

“Ren,” he whimpers, pushing him away.

But Ren won’t listen, his heart achieving control of his body. “I beg you, let me finish,” he cradles the reverend’s head, sopping titian hair clinging to his fingers.

He’s too close. His hands too warm on his skull, urgent, earnest. His eyes too penetrating, securing him like manacles.

“I’m captivated by you. Your drive and persistence. You care so much for the greater good of man but it torments you, that your voice can’t call loud enough so that people will hear. Because you think you’re only one person that if no one listens you’ve failed, that your wisdom is wasted.” Ren’s throat bobs, gagging around a fit of passion. “But you’re not just one man. You’re millions. You’re a world’s worth of lives.”

Desperately, Hux attempts to comprehend Ren’s tirade, confused and fascinated—uncomprehending yet understanding precisely.

“You had the motive and means to turn me in for murder but you hadn’t. You still haven’t. Instead you’ve been meeting with me for weeks and every visit has been the most precious of moments and I can’t stand to see you off anymore—”

A brilliantly red string of fate yanks the reverend forward, mashing their mouths together. Clumsy and wet, hot and sharp as Hux teethes Ren’s lips. It’s painful. It’s more perfect than Hux could ever have imagined—Ren’s long fingers demanding in his hair, the press of his tongue willing him with strawberries and sweet grass, the protrusion of Ren’s chest sending shudders through his wiry muscles.

The lack of rhythm in Ren’s reciprocations is the pattern. Unpredictability is the anticipated. Hux’s throat chokes out a cry when the Devil pulls him out of Ren’s arms.

The flickering moment is over. His nudity no longer liberates him and he quivers, exposed before God and man and nature.

“Please,” Ren begs. Such rightness will not be found without him. If this kiss is their last, it will damn him.

“I have to go.”

The reverend hightails to shore without looking back or attempting to dry. He fumbles with his clothing and sprints into the wood, strangling around sobs.

 

\--

 

“The reverend must be ill. He hasn’t left his home in days. Almost a week,” the townspeople chatter. “He’s wandered off into the wood for so long and so often all spring, he might just miss the solitude of indoors,” another concurs.

Hux tumbles around his sheet, twisting in silent agony. The fervor of his depression has bound him to his bed.

No matter how vigorously he prays, Ren permeates every thought—conscious and otherwise. His laugh, the anchor of his hands, the wet slip of his tongue between Hux’s lips. His peculiar stare, the pressing of his questions, how freely he carries himself, the sense in his actions, how he lives just for the sake of it.

The door shudders with a faint thud, startling Hux back to the present. Sweat matted and filthy, he scrapes at his head. They've come for him. Someone must have seen him with Ren in the lake, debauched and perverse. And even if no one saw them, he irrationally fears his perversions are illuminated for everyone to see through his zealous prayer.

On aching knees, Hux pads to his door. He opens it just a crack, peeking into the darkness of twilight. There's no one. No mob calling for his blood. No angel or devil to usher him to perdition.

Hux gasps. There’s his notebook, leaning against the door and waiting to come inside.

Through the concealment of the trees, Ren heeds the reverend with his watery gaze. The disheveled flop of his red hair, his confining attire worn even in the comfort and privacy of his own home. From the distance Ren withers at the splotchy redness of his eyes and cheeks. He’s been crying.

Ren longs to approach him, to tell him it’s alright. That what they have isn’t to be ashamed of or feared. Their love is a natural love, rare in its kind.

The reverend cradles his notebook to his chest, lips perking into a small, private smile.

Blistering his fingertips on the bark of the tree, Ren carefully approaches. He needs to see Hux smile like that to him. Up close, unhidden, open and bright.

But when Ren steps from the canopy of the shadows, the reverend’s green eyes bogle and he scurries into the safety of his homestead. Locking the door behind him. Ren’s resolve breaks at the clatter of furniture clanking against the door, barricading any unwanted intruders. He scrabbles on the wood like an eager to be freed dog, stifling a cry.

Sagging against the door, Ren’s face twists. “Hux, please. I just want to talk to you.”

Silence replies, stinging his heart.

“Please,” he begs, ears straining for movement from inside.

Muffled footsteps scuff. “You can’t be seen here,” Hux whispers, heavy with remorse.

“I just need to talk with you,” Ren whimpers. The barriers between them eat into his heart.

“Ren,” his voice permeates clearer. He’s just on the other side of the door. “Please understand why we can no longer meet.”

“This can’t be the end. You’ve helped me so much. You’ve healed me in ways I never thought possible. And if you leave me now, it will be my undoing.”

“Don’t say that,” Hux hisses.

“I can’t live without you.”

“Stop it. Stop it now!”

When Ren doesn’t respond, Hux scoots his table out of the way and unhooks his lock, daring to ogle Ren through the crack.

Ren is gone.

 

\--

 

The blaze of July burns the skin of Ren’s back as he labors over his garden, tinkering with the reddening tomatoes and berries, knees digging into the work-tossed soil. He collects his ripened fruits in a small basket and stores them for tomorrow.

The space beside him aches where Hux used to be, his lyrical voice, his sun-catching hair, his cleverness and his forbiddenness, his pride and his intelligence.

Ren sees Hux in all things. The lake—the place of their first and only union, one of the many reason’s Ren’s been unable to move on to the next town. The red strawberries, sweet like Hux’s blush and tart like Hux so often prickles under scrutiny. The beating sun illumes like Hux’s passion, his ambition for victory, heady and blinding.

He squints up to the sun, summoning a headache from its power.

A presence behind him tugs him out of his flagellation. Ren nearly topples on his bottom from his crouch.

Reverend Hux gapes down at him, hands clenched into tight fists.

“The governor’s passed,” Hux speaks. Ren could weep.

He forces his tongue to work. “I’m very happy for you.” Ren recalls how often Hux berated the governor and his weak-willed authority.

“They’ve replaced him with a schoolteacher,” he scoffs, nostalgic for the authority of the past.

Ren snorts, smile lighting his face. He’s missed Hux’s thinly veiled irritability at the decline of his flock.

“No one understands me. I’m constantly trampled by their goading for change. No one understands how difficult it is to be working for and against them—for the greater good.”

“Why don’t you move?” Ren blurts. When his environment disagreed with him, he packed up and moved. He adapted.

Ren’s words sting. “This town is my home.”

“Home isn’t supposed to wear you down.”

Hux’s throat bobs. “You’re here.”

Shock lightning strikes in Ren’s core. He stands, swiping his dirt caked palms on his trousers.

“You’re the only one who understands me,” Hux breathes. Ren’s dark eyes bore into his soul, waiting for him to continue, to explain why he’s here after over a month of silence.

Hux tugs out his notebook from his pack. “We still have a lot to cover,” he smiles, tentative.

Ren knows not what this means, if the reverend simply wants to read his theologies or perhaps discuss more of himself and his opinions, or perhaps incite something physical like the fleeting instance in the lake. But after weeks of isolation, he doesn’t care. They could spend every say sitting in silence and that would be preferable to a second of being apart.

“Let me get my mat.”

They settle in a grassy flat in the shade of an ancient maple, its twists of branches shielding them into privacy. Hux leafs through his notebook with shaking fingers.

“I’ve prepared something for you,” he confesses, daring the most transitory of glances to the heartfelt countenance softening Ren.

“It is not any form or visible representation, nor shape, nor color, nor shining light that is seen, wherein this great happiness of the soul consists. It is an intellectual view by which God is seen. God is a spiritual being, and he is beheld with the understanding. The soul has in itself those powers which are capable of apprehending objects, especially spiritual objects, without looking through the windows of the outward senses.” His sermon slips around his mouth like soupy clay, clumsy and scattered. He prays Ren will understand.

“If we come to some apprehension of God’s being, and of his being almighty, all-wise, and good, by ratiocination—that is not what the scripture calls seeing God,” he continues. “It is a more immediate way of understanding and viewing that can only be labeled as sight. Nor will such an apprehension of his almighty glory, will ever make the soul truly blessed.”

Ren’s blood pulses in his ears, heart threatening to beat itself to stillness.

“But to see God is this: it is to have an immediate, sensible, and certain understanding of his glorious excellency and love. And that love is for all creations.” The leather binding of Hux’s notebook creaks as it closes, slipping into his lap. “His love—I want to be worthy of it. I feel worthy of love when I’m with you.”

Exhaling, Ren’s chin quivers. He bores into the reverend’s fluttering gaze. “You’re always so eloquent,” he attempts a smirk.

The world shifts when Hux smiles, sliding close to Ren’s side, and lays his head on Ren’s shoulder. A million thoughts fly in Ren’s head. Has Hux truly accepted his affections? Will he want to kiss? Perhaps do more than kiss? Should he wrap his arms around him lest he try and leave again?

“I don’t want to think about anything right now,” Hux mutters, turning his head to smell the salt of Ren’s bare shoulder.

“You don’t have to,” Ren tells him, voice gravely at Hux’s proximity.

The pang for physical contact is an impetuous desire. The Devil pushes thoughts of how close to Ren he truly longs to be—his mouth, his hands, his skin, visions of the gorge of his manhood like a rutting bull. It’s getting harder and harder to beg for God’s guidance in defeating the Devil’s reach. Soon it will be impossible to ignore, cankerous in its nature.

A soulful exhaustion woes him and he slinks low, head settling into the warmth of Ren’s lap, thighs cushioning his skull. It may only be midday but he slips into the security of sleep.

Upon his waking, Hux blinks up at the swirl of the heavens beaming down at him, murky in the dying sunlight. But soon the stars will glow their natural vibrancy, high and permanent in their unattainable grace. He must have been asleep for hours.

Ren’s leg is sturdy under his head. He cranes his neck. Ren’s flat on his back, head cocked to the side in slumber. The bulge between his legs swells at the angle, right in front of Hux’s nose. Along with fear—fear of God’s wrath, fear of judgement from his fellow man—Hux heats with curiosity. If Ren were awake right now, what would he think of his face in his lap like this?

He sits up, inspecting the expanse of Ren’s bared chest, glimmering in the dying daylight. Unabashed, he eyes the smattering of beauty marks freckling his skin and hairs pooling low on his belly, and the few scars of various sizes and severities. His fingers itch to trace them, test their texture.

Ren’s face is slack in slumber, dark hairs strewn across his forehead. His fingers assume control and swipe at the crosshatching hairs. Inadvertently waking Ren up, dark eyes sucking him in.

Ashamed, he tucks his hand away. He longs to run off into the wood and isolate himself from the world, but a warm grip to his wrist stops him.

“How are you feeling?” Ren asks softly, hand gentle around him.

Hux’s face crumples. He leans down to place a chaste kiss on Ren’s lips, warm like the dribble of anointment. Ren’s wiry intake of breath prickles his skin.

When he tries to withdraw, Ren sits up, his mouth following his and refusing to part. He lets go of his wrist to cradle his skull, groaning when Hux yields to his tongue.

The reverend grimaces, presenting Ren his cheek instead of his tingling mouth. “I’m so sorry,” he hisses.

“For what?”

“If I hadn’t followed you into the woods that first time, I wouldn’t have made us like this. We’re corrupted. We’re damned.” He’s a victim to his own selfish, carnal impulses. If Ren doesn’t stop him now, he’ll never stop.

Ren’s long thumb pets his bottom lip. “I don’t regret meeting and communing with you.”

He’s not listening. “What we’re doing is foul. It’s a crime against nature,” Hux grates, heartbeat spiking at Ren’s tender ministrations to his jaw and lip.

“Does it really feel that way? When you look in your heart? Does it feel corrupt?”

Bleary with tears of frustration, Hux propels, begging fervent kisses to Ren’s waiting mouth. Eyes squeezed shut, tonguing the bed of Ren’s own tongue, nipping at his lips. Clawed hands grappling Ren’s chest, neck, anything he can get his bumbling hands on. Lust sharpens his senses, pleading whimpers from his throat.

Ren’s hands scoop him up into his lap, tight and bruising on his waist. He suckles along his jaw and the crevice between it and his ear and Hux yelps, the foreign sensation igniting him. His fingers card thought Ren’s tousled hair, memorizing the minute spaces of scalp between every follicle. Hot and damning like hellfire, Ren mouths at his neck, scraping with his teeth and bruising with his tongue. Hux quivers and flounders, needy and confused.

He shudders over the bump of Ren’s manhood—his _cock_ —incessant and alarming underneath his bottom. “Ren,” he pants, imploring more kisses to his red lips.

Graciously Ren reciprocates, prodding his sides. He releases the trembling reverend with a wet pop. “Can I make you feel good? Can I use my mouth on you?”

“On me?” he breathes, uncomprehending.

Ren answers with a punctuating stimulation with his hand to his virginal manhood. Like dunking his head under water, Hux breaches a startling realization. “Please,” he pants.

“Are you sure?” Ren asks with elation, relief.

Breakneck, he nods, letting Ren in.

Flat on his back and with Ren on top of him, Hux gapes. The sensation of Ren’s mammoth thigh entices strange and unrestrained noises from within—perfect noises that will haunt Ren’s dreams.

Ren pries at the clasps of his wool coat. “It’s July,” he smirks, giddy.

“Not like you would notice. You’re shirtless half the year,” he spits, underlying fondness brightening his features.

“I was preening like a peacock, wasn’t I?” Ren berates lightly.

“Obviously.” It’s so easy with Ren. It’s easy to speak and to simply just be. He shrugs off his coat and shirt with Ren’s enthusiastic assistance.

Fingers hover on the hem of his trousers, and Ren stares down to the reverends flushed face. He can’t think of anything to say but Hux answers for him. Timidly, he eases his bottom from the confines of his trousers and undershorts, the thickening curl of his cock lolling free.

Ren salivates. It’s an impeccable size and shape for Hux’s natural slightness, pink and untouched. He groans in approval, heatedly collapsing around Hux’s shoulders, forcing his long legs to part around his hips. “Beautiful,” he breathes in Hux’s ear, hot and vibrating.

This is it, he thinks. This is the summit of his lifetime of structure and order—nude, flat on his back, erection raging with Ren and his hot mouth between him, on top of him. He’s never felt this good about something so wicked.

Like all things Ren does, he takes his time, meticulously tonguing at the fresh unblemished skin of Hux’s chest and belly, soft and round and lean and angular all at once. Ren’s mop of hair skims along to halo each of his kisses. When Ren finally touches his bare cock, Hux’s legs shake, chasing new and undiscovered highs. He guides his cock into his mouth and Hux shouts—awestruck.

“Ren,” he pleads. He never wants this to end: Ren on him, sucking hotly and groping at the junction of his testes, his tongue a slippery weapon against his flesh. It’s divine.

He scrapes his nails through Ren’s scalp, eliciting a buzzing groan around his cock. Urging Ren to give him more, pushing and pulling at his hair until his body collapses, shuddering around a startling sensation unlike anything he’s ever felt. The fact that it came from Ren draws crisp tears to his eyes, overwhelmed from his undoing.

Ren pulls off, swallowing the come pooled in his mouth. The reverend came in record speed. This was possibly, probably, the first time he’s ever had sex. Not that he dare point it out.

His knees hang in the air, framing Ren’s flushed face. “So that’s what that feels like,” Hux murmurs, gazing down at Ren. Loose and playful, Hux squeezes Ren’s ears between his thighs for no reason at all.

“It wasn’t too much?” Hux can’t leave him now, not that he’s shown him how close he needs him. He wants to be close like this always, every day.

He wants Hux to stay with him at his camp. They’ll procure new texts and old ones and read to each other in the sunlit field. He can finish teaching Hux how to swim until they’re swimming circles around each other. They can walk together for miles without any destination because it won’t matter. It’ll never matter, so long as they’re together.

Hux sits up on his elbows. “You’ve shown me a side of myself I’d been running from for as long as I can remember.”

“And now that you’ve let it catch you?” Ren crawls over him on all fours, obstructing his view of the branches and the glimmering stars between them.

Blinking up to Ren’s hopeful smile, Hux tugs him down, wrapping his arms around the span of his shoulders. He burrows his nose in Ren’s hair, surrendering himself to be squished under Ren’s enormity.

After several peaceful moments of listening to the bugs croak and the wind shake the maple leaves, Ren scoots to his side, half on top of Hux and half on the mat below.

“Your father was a governor?”

Hux’s mouth twitches. “Yes, he was.”

“And you became a reverend? Why?”

Surprising them both Hux’s lips tug into a smile. “So I wouldn’t have to find a wife.”

Ren snorts, petting his side. “Seriously?”

Hux chuckles at Ren’s scandalized guffaw, and then sobers. “You make yourself do things to pass the time. To fit into a niche. Over time, you become the things you impose until there isn’t a difference between the two.”

Like ditching your family name, your entire identity because of an act of inhumane violence. One iota of an instance where your life is changed—and thus morphing you into a new person all together. “If you didn’t have to worry about that, what would you have done?”

He’d considered that, one upon a time. “I’d have liked to join the military. Perhaps become a ranger.”

Ren’s brows rise. “Very, very interesting, Reverend. I see you to be a captain. Or a colonel with your ambition. Maybe even a general. General Hux.”

Scoffing, Hux shakes off the fantasy, as appealing and exciting and taunting as it seems. If he joined the military he likely never would have met Ren. He doesn’t want consider that possibility. Never having met Ren would surely be a far worse fate than a life of celibacy as a reverend. That is, until today. “And what about you? What would you have done if your father was never killed?”

Age old anger tightens Ren’s features. “But he was.”

“And I’m still a sodomite but I answered your questions,” Hux smirks, the self-flagellating label a brand to his skin.

Considering, Ren sighs. “I’d become an apprentice. Study an ancient trade.”

“Like what?”

“Wrought iron work. Masonry. Carpentry. Doesn’t matter. Anything like that, I know I’d do well.”

“That may still be a possibility for you.” He’d have to move somewhere, trade labor for skill. Probably to a significantly more populated area than this lakeshore.

“But then all my time and attention would be away from you,” Ren grins, bending to tongue at the juncture of skin on his neck.

Shuddering, Hux croons. “You say that now but you could be building me a house. A proper one, unlike your tent.”

Ren pulls back. “A house, huh?” His heartstrings tug like the hairs of a bow.

“With a big window. It will be dreadful in the winter but you’ll be there to warm me. Won’t you?”

Ren moves over him, brushing his lips on his chest. He laves over a nipple, hardening it to a peak. “I really missed you,” he pouts into Hux’s skin.

“I had to think about what was most precious to me,” he breathes, massaging Ren’s scalp.

Ren hums into his stomach, nipping down to his flaccid cock. Craving to taste him again, Ren laps on the underside and the back of his thigh.

Breathing hotly, Ren pins his thigh to his chest. “What are you—” Hux cuts himself off with a shrill yelp when Ren’s tongue slips between the juncture of his ass. He whimpers, legs drooping and spreading himself for Ren to use.

That wet, dexterous tongue grazes his most private taints, hidden and susceptible. Mouth agape in a soundless cry, Hux trembles. His body gyrates in worrisome zeal.

Ren pulls away, wild hair tacky on his dampened cheeks. “I’m the first to have you, aren’t I?”

Hux’s face twists, his bottom slickened with Ren’s saliva. Open and wet for Ren. He nods, unable to retort with sarcasm.

“Will you let me inside you?”

The wish hangs in the humid air like a tendril of fog. There is no worse sin to one’s body, no more perverse act that one man can inflict on another. It’s the sin of beasts, animalistic men who have no civility or care for the temple of their bodies.

Yet it appeals to him like nothing else—Ren claiming him where no one else would ever claim, entering him like a phantasm, marking him like a heedless stain. Branding into his flesh, deep enough where no one would dare remove it and take it from him.

It will hurt. He can’t imagine that it won’t. He can’t imagine it any other way.

“Do it. I want it,” he stammers, craning his legs apart.

Ren doesn’t hesitate any longer. “I need to get some supplies. Please don’t move,” he urges.

The breeze picks up, chilling the wetness of his skin and the void where Ren once nestled. Distantly he can hear Ren’s campsite skittering with paraphernalia. Until Ren’s boots scrape close and his vision fills with Ren’s height from his recline.

“Are you sure?” Ren breathes.

 “I’m sure,” Hux confirms.

“It’s alright if you’re not sure.”

“Christ, Ren,” he snaps.

A grin eases through his face at the reverend’s blaspheme however dulled by the impending carnal act they anticipate. “Lie on your stomach for me,” Ren murmurs.

Heartbeat rattling, Hux complies, spreading his legs for good measure.

Ren slips out of his work roughened trousers and situates himself across his thighs, hardened cock kissing Hux’s gooseflesh.

“Wait,” Hux yelps before he can stop himself.

Panicking, Ren stiffens.

He wants to see all of Ren. “Can I possibly—try my mouth?”

“Of course,” Ren gasps, restraining his simultaneous disappointment and anticipation. “And you don’t ever have to feel obligated to let me have you in that way.” He cries to enter him but would never be able to live with himself if he ever made Hux do something he didn’t want to.

“I want that too. I just want to taste you first,” Hux cranes his head backwards to ogle Ren’s nudity. God almighty. Ren’s enormous, heavy and daunting.

“Oh, Hell,” Ren mutters, peeling himself off of him. He crawls over to Hux’s waiting head, cock positioned to his mouth.

Hux gapes at it as if he doesn’t have a clue what to do. With all the patience in the world, Ren hovers, waiting for him to make the first move. His tentative tongue parts his lips and he bows to lave at the tip. Ren moans, forcing himself to restrain from canting his hips.

One lick and he’s addicted, flattening his tongue over the salty ripe flesh. Ren is hot and smooth like the drizzle of the finest tea. He suctions his mouth around its tip, sucking and sampling, looking up for approval.

Ren bores down, wide fingers cradling his skull. “Like it?”

His hot mouth pops off, rounded eyes dark and needy. “I love it,” he admits shyly. Spine arching at the confession, Hux punctuates with another lick and nibble.

Scrabbling for Hux’s backside once more, Ren delves his tongue into the seam of his ass, nipping at his modest roundness. Hux gasps, cock hardening onto the mat. Ren kisses the scar there, healed and flat. It’s a mark they made together—Ren set the trap and Hux sprung it.

“The oil will ease the way,” Ren murmurs. “It’ll feel good.”

Ren was right about the other ways he made him feel good. He trusts him. He nods, bracing against the mat. Lukewarm wetness dribbles onto his ass, drooling between the seam and to the juncture of his testes. He closes his eyes.

A pad of a finger traces his hole followed by another dribble. It sinks in slow and steady—foreign and strange and relentless. Trembling around him, Hux works his throat, eyes wide.

“Don’t think about it too much. Close your eyes,” Ren tells him, husky.

Ren seats the finger as deep as it will go, testing its give. Tightness strangles it but he perseveres.

“I’m going to add another and you must tell me if you want me to stop.”

Nodding briskly, he awaits the penetration to double—unable to conceptualize how it’ll triple then quadruple when one is almost too much. The second finger spears him and he grunts, cowering.

Ren hesitates for Hux’s objection and when it never comes, he works his fingers deep, thorough. Adding oil to the sloppiness, aiming for the secret inside all men that turn them wanton and needy.

A sensitive and nervous spot in him expels a whimper. Ren expected as much, so he fingers the secret place, reveling in Hux’s drastic change of breathing. When Hux devolves to audible cries, he adds another finger to join his pursuit.

Hux hisses as if burned, stretched wide like a cleaved log. He pushes on, begging Ren fill him with more strange, keen touches.

“You’re doing so well,” Ren promises. Hux’s responsiveness is enthralling and he longs to make him feel proud about it.

Hux pries his legs apart, opening for more. Determined, Ren gives it to him, four of his fingers delivered unyielding.

Shouting, Hux forces himself not to scrabble away from the new intrusion.

“Easy, easy.” With deft concentration Ren eases off his thighs while maintaining his penetration. “Hands and knees, now,” he guides. His free hand fists Hux’s wilting hardness, easing him into complacency.

“Ready?”

Head heavy between his protruding shoulders, Hux whimpers. There’s no going back. He doesn’t want to go back. “Yes,” he cries.

The expulsion is agonizing even with all of Ren’s aching gentleness.

Ren slicks up his cock, mindful of Hux’s pained whimpers. He spreads aside a cheek to anchor his tip, kissing his loosened hole.

The initial breach wells tears in his eyes which spill at Ren’s careful insistency. He’s split in half, cracked open and gaping, insides rearranging for Ren to nest. He wails, pressing backwards onto him.

Suffocated in impossible tightness, Ren croons, easing as slow as possible. When he settles he drops low, tendering a kiss to the side of Hux’s sweat matted head. “We’re meant to be joined in this way,” he teethes at Hux’s pale neck, who melts into the touch. “Do you feel it? Do you feel how right this is?”

“Oh, Ren,” he pleads. “Make me yours.”

Reaching around Ren tugs at his cock, eliciting Hux’s beautiful noises. He delivers his first punctuating thrust, out then back in again.

A slick palm pressures on his spine. “Arch your back a little,” Ren instructs, breathless. Hux complies and his eyes fly open, choking on a fresh string of moans. Yes there is pain—indeed it is a relentless, raw and foreign pain. But it is a maddening pain, addicting like everything else about Ren. His hole collapses and stretches, transformed by Ren into a channel for receiving. Ren breathes life into him, fills him with ache and pleasure and feeling and soul.

Elbows buckling, Hux claws at his hair, goading Ren to do his will. The wet, sloppy squelch of Ren’s ministrations hypnotizes him. Ren’s hand grounds on his cock, pumping him to completion. He chases the edge, falling off when Ren ignites sparks inside him with a pummel of thrusts. Painting Ren’s fingers, lurching backwards, riding the waves of deliverance.

Perfect, perfect noises grace his ears, and Ren goads more of Hux’s spasms. Raking his nails along his arching back, squeezing and kneading the roundness of his ass. Boneless, Hux sprawls onto the mat. Ren shouts, coming deep inside where no one’s ever come before. Marking, sealing, everlasting and absolute.

Ren eases out of him, marveling at his hole sealing shut in his wake. Hux rolls over onto his side. He brands him with the most human, open countenance imaginable. Toppling into his arms, Ren’s heart swells another size, chockfull of soulful reverence. He burrows into Hux’s neck, inhaling his cherished scent.

Hux gazes to the brightened stars, speckling between the branches of the maple. The silent comfort of Ren’s breath on him lulls him into meditation, the heavens and nature and Ren, enfolding him in its embrace.

Nighttime insects purr their even harmony until Ren breaks the stagnancy. “Sorry. It’s gonna leak out of you as soon as you get up.”

Hux smiles, uncaring. His buttocks twinge with even the most delicate movements. “We should get washed. I want to spend the night here.”

Heart soaring, Ren helps him to his feet, hands anchoring the thin bones of his hips. Surely enough Ren’s seed bleeds out of him and he shivers at the bizarre sensation. He’ll forever associate the sensation with Ren, as he associates contentment, pleasure, freedom, and virtue.

The lake glitters with the moon’s glow. Ren ushers him to the lakeshore and together they dip at the ankles. Until Hux tugs him by the arm and they stumble wildly. Ren laughs, high and gleeful. He accosts Hux by his slight waist, carrying them both chest deep.

Grimacing, Hux hisses at the tenderness of his hole under the scrutiny of the lake water. A reminder of Ren’s imprint on him. He never wants it to heal.

“Are you alright?” Ren asks worriedly.

“Never better,” he smiles. Ren rinses his face and mouth, gargling the lake water while Hux follows in suit. Ren supports him as he flounders to tread, clumsy before Ren’s expertise.

They wade to a shallower area and Ren kisses him, transferring the residual salt from their lovemaking and the warmth of the earthy lake. The binding of Ren’s arms suspends him in bliss.

Pinpricks of torch fire permeate the distant wood.

Hux’s world comes crashing down.

Shame and disgrace spear into him like an arrowhead, sins from every soul that ever walked this earth before. “Ren,” he hisses frantically.

Ren whips to the tree line. “Are you expecting anyone?” he asks, stunned. Terrified.

“Ren!” he pleads. This cannot be the end.

“Go. Hide. I’ll get rid of them.”

Hux sprints out of the lake and towards to oak tree, the one of which upon the base they shared their bodies and hearts. He tugs on his clothes and crouches in the dark, praying Ren will be okay. Praying for mercy.

Three armed men approach, military men with rifles and swords. Hux has never seen them before. They confront Ren—who luckily managed to slip on a spare pair of trousers—not yet hostile, though their weapons glint from their torches. Hux’s heart pangs with fear.

Hell breaks and Ren launches at them, breaking the peace. Christ, Ren! He should have been out there to manipulate the men into leaving.

Hux’s eyes cloud with tears when they overpower him, prodding a sword at his neck. One of them heaves the butt of their rifle to the back of his skull and he slumps over, unconscious. They slither into the wood, lugging all of Ren’s mass in the direction of town.

Slumping to the ground, Hux prays to his wrathful God.

 

\--

 

It’s the following morning, the break of dawn. Reverend Hux scopes the nearly empty streets for anyone who may be useful to help him locate Ren.

They committed an atrocity last night, an abominable union of their own free will. The original sin. Mankind is destined to sink their teeth into the forbidden fruit. Hux and Ren are no different, and for that they were punished.

If Hux had any self-care left in his heart, he’d forget about Ren and save himself while he still can. But what little mortal life he has left is for Ren and he will do everything he can to see him to safety. Damnation is inevitable.

Hux hurries through the bends of town, settling for the local inn.

“Good morning, Reverend,” the innkeeper greets.

“Have three men come here? Military men?” he demands, sparing all pleasantries.

“Why, yes. Just yesterday. I do believe they’re asleep.”

Hux’s face twists in relief. “What are they doing here? Did you notice anything unusual about their party?” Surely the innkeeper would be able to tell if they’re harboring an unconscious drifter.

“They came in late, but that was probably related to their arrest.”

“Arrest?”

“That vagrant, the one you used to gripe about. They’re seeing his execution.”

Terror blanches him. “Kylo Ren? Where is he?”

“They’re holding him at the jailhouse ‘til morning—oh just about now. Whenever they decided to head back to …” The innkeeper doesn’t bother finishing his sentence, seeing that the reverend’s torn out the door as if he’s being chased by the Devil himself.

Hux pants, fingernails grating the skin of his palms. The jailhouse warden welcomes him.

“Kylo Ren. I need to speak with him.” He’s had this conversation many times before. Now everything has changed.

“Yes, Reverend. Right this way.” The warden ushers him to the corner most cell. “You’ll be pleased to hear he’s been pinned for murder this time.”

Hux can barely contain his relief. Ren’s in his cell, pawing at the bars.

Dark eyes shine with hope at Hux’s approach. Ren longs to take him in his arms but the division of the bars force them to opposing sides.

“His real name, Benjamin Solo,” spits the warden. Ren glowers with murderous intent. “He beheaded a lieutenant in the royal navy, but not before claiming the life of his own father.”

There’s no way that carries an ounce of truth. Except for the beheading part. And Benjamin Solo? Ren wouldn’t lie about his own name. “Thank you. I wish to speak with him alone,” Hux grates to the floor.

“You’re really in for it. The reverend here shows little mercy,” the warden taunts to Ren through the bars.

When they’re alone, Hux wilts. “Ren, are you alright?”

Fate. Justice. Reckoning. “They’ve come for me.”

“How did they find you?” It must have been twenty years.

To his surprise Ren quirks his lip. “Turns out the word got out of a certain reverend’s crusade to see me to justice. I guess it traveled down the vine.”

“Hell, Ren,” Hux laments. He doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he can put in a good word, say he was wrong, but how helpful could a reverend’s decree help someone on the hook for a murder? “Where are they taking you?” he chokes around the threat of fresh sobs.

“Back to where I came from.”

“But he said you killed your father. They’re lying. There has to be a way to fix this.” Never mind that they already pinned him for killing the soldier, which is more likely the reason for the warrant that calls for his arrest. “It’s been so long ago. How can they be sure?”

Bile claws up his tongue. “Because I confessed.”

“Why? Why would you do that?” He knowingly confessed to a capital crime—knowing full well what would happen—and for what?

“I killed him. I killed my father.”

This can’t be what he’s hearing. Everything is falling apart, slipping out of his fingers.

Ren’s throat swells shut, withering under Hux’s despair.

“You were a child,” Hux tries. Unless he lied about that too.

“That doesn’t excuse a damned thing. I _hated_ my father for abandoning me and my mother. I hated him so much for being such a coward. I tracked him down and begged him to return and when he—” Ren strangulates around his confession, skin of his sweat slick forehead digging into the bars. “It all happened so quickly. I was—so, so young. When I was cornered by the Native who told me his sister was kidnapped, I told them I saw my father take her.”

“Ren…” He doesn’t know what to say. He’s relieved. Somehow he feared that the story was much different, that Ren had been the one to slash his father with a hatchet. He begs to be on his side. “How could you have known he’d kill him? It was a mistake.”

“I knew. I knew, because I said he had killed her,” he sobs. “It was all my fault.” Tears stripe his smudged cheeks, wetting against the rusted bars. “When I realized what I’d done, I murdered that officer—her real attacker. But I knew, I _knew_ it was my fault.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hux tells him, securing his hands around Ren’s steely grip to the cell door. 

“And I can’t—I can’t go on like this anymore. Not in this life. It’s agonizing.”

“That’s not true. There’s us. We can go far from here,” he stammers. “Far from society. It can just be us.”

Ren sobers through his tears at the enticing vision. “You’d do that?”

He would. He means it. “I would do anything to stay by your side.”

A soulful sorrow decays Ren’s features. “We could start over.”

Hux smiles, assuring. “Yes, yes we can.” He spins around. If he could just get the jailhouse key, trick the warden into abandoning his post—

Shooting through the bars, Ren’s hand grips the nape of his neck. “We can start over,” he tells him, dazed and far off.

Something isn’t right. “I need to get the warden to leave. We don’t have much time.”

Ren’s eyes glint with a feral mania, like the answer to God and life itself shone before his eyes. “We can start over. Like last time. Do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

 “This life—us here, now. It’s not our only life.” Ren cups Hux’s skull, boring into him. “We’ve lived a world’s worth of lives.”

Christ. “Ren, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You and me. We’ve done this before. We lived amongst the stars, powerful and revered.”

They must’ve bumped his head hard enough to scramble all reasoning.

But Ren continues, ignoring Hux’s pointed incredulity, flying on the most pure belief in his heart. “I killed my father in this life. It’s torn me apart in ways I can’t describe. I can do it differently in the next. And just like I found you in this one, I’ll find you in the next.”

Dammit, Ren. “Enough of that. I won’t see to your execution.”

“It has to happen this way. It’s only right,” Ren believes. In the next life he won’t make the same mistake.

In the next life, it’ll be different.

Right?

“Shut up! No, it’s not!” Livid, Hux shoves away from the bars. If Ren won’t save his own skin, he damn well will do it for him.

Down the hall echoes several voices. The soldiers. He needs more time!

“Listen to me, Ren—Benjamin Solo—whatever your name is.” No longer is Ren gallivanting in his overwrought imagination, instead focusing on the way his given name—the name before he’d killed his father—sounds on Hux’s lips.

He’s got his attention. Good. “I made a choice to abandon everything that I am to be with you. Everything my church has given me, all of it lost to you.”

Ren wavers, sinking into the bars.

“And I never will regret it. The love we…” Footsteps approach, a daunting clatter down the hall. “They’re coming for you. They are going to hang you,” Hux spits. “Whatever lives we’ve shared, whatever atrocities we’ve committed in them—there’s always time in them to forgive yourself and if you don’t, then whatever _shit_ you’ve caused in this life will just carry on into the next. Is that what you want to happen? Is that how you choose to condemn your soul? Life after life, eternal damnation?”

Eye to eye, Ren and Hux seethe, pummeled by the energy of past lives simmering in their ancient souls.

“Told you, Solo,” chuckles the warden. “The Reverend always said you’re scum on his boot.”

 _So what’s it gonna be?_ Hux glowers, squaring himself up for Ren to make his decision.

The warden unlocks the door, ushering Ren out with a shove. Ren coils. The room thickens with anticipation.

In the blink of an eye, Hux is forced into a chokehold, the wrong end of the barrel of the warden’s pistol digging into his temple. He forces the coy grin away from his lips, schooling his face into terror.

“Anybody make a move and I’ll blow his damned head off!” Ren barks, bicep crunching onto Hux’s windpipe.

One of the soldiers curses the warden for his ineptness while the others bicker over whatever bounty they’ve lost. The warden complains over the threat to the reverend’s life. He’s a man of God!

“Give him the key,” Ren orders the warden.

Hux holds out his hand.

“Get in the cell. Now!”

Begrudgingly they comply, and Ren shoves Hux to lock them up. Hux tosses the key out the nearest window. With entirely too much enthusiasm and zero prompting from his captor. The warden’s brows climb his hairline.

“You’re coming with me,” Ren smirks, aiming the pistol to Hux’s back.

No longer bothering to position the pistol, Ren tugs Hux along through the threshold of the jailhouse.

“You meant it? We’re going?”

Hux grins, giddy. He grabs Ren’s hand and together they flee into the wood.

 

\--

 

A warm autumn day greets Hux upon waking, sunny air breezing through the straw comprising their shelter and onto his freckled cheeks. His hands trace the fringe of his golden bangs in want of a trim, then over the satisfying prickle of the day’s old hair on his jaw. He’s to harvest from the wild wheat field again today, as was his chore yesterday.

Ren snakes a hand around his waist, sturdy and sure. “Wh’re you going?” he murmurs, squeezing him tight.

“To do my morning ritual,” he smiles, leaning backwards into Ren’s chest.

“Hm. Do me instead,” Ren snickers. He palms Hux through his trousers, breathing in his scent.

“You’re dreadful. Your jokes are dreadful and your breath is dreadful— _ah_ ,” Hux moans at the heat of Ren’s mouth on his neck.

His morning ritual is disrupted in the most spectacular of ways.

That night they sit together in the middle of the wild wheat field, Hux cradling Ren in the vee of his thighs.

Ren prays that night. They pray together like they do every night. They pray for redemption for the atrocities they committed in this life, the next life, the last life, in the human hope that one day they can finally join the redeemer in the kingdom of Heaven.

They gaze to the tilt of the heavens, the sweep of bright stars violet and gold—all of God’s worlds and souls shining down on them. Pure souls and evil souls and souls that don’t distinguish between the two, all equal in brightness.

Hux bends to anoint Ren’s head with a kiss, a promise of their eternal union as devious, wicked, human souls. Born and reborn to sin and forgive atop this earth, or another faraway place. Perhaps Heaven can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading and for your feedback! 
> 
> [here](http://ballvvasher.tumblr.com/post/152785560579/collage-for-my-puritanhuxdrifterkylo-au) is a collage i made to go with this fic :D


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